Melbourne: Researchers have developed a novel device which allows scientists to call up a frog survey site and monitor the amphibians in the wild, an advance that may lead to new strategies in wildlife conservation. The study, published in the journal Methods in Ecology and Evolution, noted that the device — named FrogPhone — is the world’s first acoustic device based on a direct phone call that remotely surveys wildlife without the need for pre-recording and uploading the sounds.
The researchers, including those from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Australia, said the FrogPhone allows researchers to “call” a frog habitat, any time, once the device has been installed.
“Recording devices currently used for passive acoustic monitoring are generally limited to the recording of sound, and lack the ability to capture additional environmental parameters specific for the time of each survey (e.g. temperature). They also tend to create a large data backlog as the recordings are locally stored on the device until they are collected by researchers for analysis,” they wrote in the study. The new FrogPhone uses 3G/4G cellular mobile data coverage, and enables mobile phones to carry the frog calls. —PTI
